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Bird counting: a Christmas tradition, for some

Bird count volunteers (front to back) Alan Knothe, Angie Miner and John Murphy use binoculars and spotting scopes Monday to assess the number and species of birds at the old county sewage treatment facility on Beal Extension during the Choctawhatchee Audubon Society’s annual Christmas Bird Count.

DEVON RAVINE / Daily News

By TOM McLAUGHLIN / Daily News

Published: Monday, December 17, 2012 at 05:48 PM.

A reasonable person might consider it a bad omen to have an opossum be the first critter sighted at an annual Christmas bird count.

But reasonable people aren’t standing in the middle of a seldom-traveled Okaloosa County roadway at 5:15 a.m. either, hooting into the darkness in hopes of having a Great Horned Owl show up.

The Choctawhatchee Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count was conducted Monday inside a 15-mile circle whose midpoint would have been somewhere close to the main gate at Eglin Air Force Base.

Alan Knothe, a biologist for the Florida Audubon Society, headed this year’s count and a team of three volunteers.

His team was up well before dawn, braving the muck and the mire.

They call birding that early “owling.”

As night became day, the group hiked through closed landfills and spray fields and under power lines, set up watch over an abandoned waste treatment facility and suffered wind and heavy rain to count birds in their sector.

Knothe likes to boast that birders “visit all the good places,” which offer less developed areas and unique environments that attract different species of birds.

“I feel like we should at least sample every type of habitat in our area,” Knothe said as he slogged through wet mud, scaring up snipe at the old county landfill. “You can’t go everywhere. It’s just too big.”

The Christmas Bird Count is affectionately known to participants as “the world’s most popular citizen science project.”

Birders across North and South America participate in the annual count by choosing a day within three weeks of Christmas to get out and tally as many birds as they can find.

“It’s the oldest and largest wildlife survey in the world,” Knothe said.

The bird count actually originated more than 100 years ago when a wise soul concluded the time had come to replace a Christmas-season competition that awarded first prize to the hunter who shot and killed the most birds and small animals.

“Someone decided it was not a good idea,” Knothe said. “They decided to go out and count birds instead.”

John Murphy, a Franklin County resident who, like Knothe, is a seasoned birder, couldn’t seem to get enough of the listening, watching, calling and identifying.

“I love it,” said Murphy, who will take part in five more Christmas bird counts this year.

Knothe and Murphy are expert enough to identify birds by the sound of their calls, or the shape of their bodies. They even identified a wild turkey Monday by footprints it had left in the sand.

Each bird identified is recorded.

The first of the 61 different bird species sighted in the initial five hours of this year’s count may have excited Knothe the most.

Just as the rising sun was peeking over the horizon, a pair of barn owls was spotted swooping in a threatening fashion, apparently responding defiantly to the team’s screech owl calls.

“If we’re only going to get one owl, that’s the one to get,” Knothe said. They’re hard to find.”

“That,” he added breathlessly. “May be the bird of the day.”

There would be many more birds, though — more than 500 before the rain came at 10 a.m. — and lots of excitement.

A clay-colored sparrow, rare to Northwest Florida, caught everyone’s attention, as did a woodcock that surprised the team when it flew from cover before anyone tried to call it.

There were coots and snipes and yellow-bellied sap suckers galore. Even a regal peregrine falcon, the world’s fastest animal.

The third volunteer on Knothe’s team, Angie Miner, has a real job catching and tagging endangered salamanders.

She’s in her second year of birding and was soaking in every bit of advice Knothe and Murphy were willing to give.

“I definitely am learning a lot,” she said. “I’m trying to catch on to all these chits and chats we’re hearing. If the birds did their full call, I’d be fine.”

The information gathered through the bird count, while not considered to be 100 percent accurate, is turned over to the National Audubon society and helps the organization keep track of population trends, Knothe said.

Some experts say the bird count points out trends — hummingbirds wintering farther north than usual, for instance — that might lend further credence to the argument for global warming.

Winter is a good time for the count, Knothe said, because the seasonal migrations have ended and the birds present in an area have taken up at least seasonal residency.

Monday’s rains watered down this year’s count for the Knothe team, but even after heavy storms struck at 10 a.m. the plan remained to count as many birds as possible from dark until dark.

The crew ceased counting shortly before 4:30 p.m., but not until after it had caught sight of a rare red-breasted nut hatch.

Knothe said his team had documented more than 70 individual species of bird before calling it a day.

“It was good birding and yucky weather,” he said. “The number of species we were able to get was probably down, but we did get some good birds.

Alan Knothe, a biologist for the Florida Audubon Society, headed this year’s count and a team of three volunteers.

His team was up well before dawn, braving the muck and the mire.

They call birding that early “owling.”

As night became day, the group hiked through closed landfills and spray fields and under power lines, set up watch over an abandoned waste treatment facility and suffered wind and heavy rain to count birds in their sector.

Knothe likes to boast that birders “visit all the good places,” which offer less developed areas and unique environments that attract different species of birds.

“I feel like we should at least sample every type of habitat in our area,” Knothe said as he slogged through wet mud, scaring up snipe at the old county landfill. “You can’t go everywhere. It’s just too big.”

The Christmas Bird Count is affectionately known to participants as “the world’s most popular citizen science project.”

Birders across North and South America participate in the annual count by choosing a day within three weeks of Christmas to get out and tally as many birds as they can find.

“It’s the oldest and largest wildlife survey in the world,” Knothe said.

The bird count actually originated more than 100 years ago when a wise soul concluded the time had come to replace a Christmas-season competition that awarded first prize to the hunter who shot and killed the most birds and small animals.

“Someone decided it was not a good idea,” Knothe said. “They decided to go out and count birds instead.”

John Murphy, a Franklin County resident who, like Knothe, is a seasoned birder, couldn’t seem to get enough of the listening, watching, calling and identifying.

“I love it,” said Murphy, who will take part in five more Christmas bird counts this year.

Knothe and Murphy are expert enough to identify birds by the sound of their calls, or the shape of their bodies. They even identified a wild turkey Monday by footprints it had left in the sand.

Each bird identified is recorded.

The first of the 61 different bird species sighted in the initial five hours of this year’s count may have excited Knothe the most.

Just as the rising sun was peeking over the horizon, a pair of barn owls was spotted swooping in a threatening fashion, apparently responding defiantly to the team’s screech owl calls.

“If we’re only going to get one owl, that’s the one to get,” Knothe said. They’re hard to find.”

“That,” he added breathlessly. “May be the bird of the day.”

There would be many more birds, though — more than 500 before the rain came at 10 a.m. — and lots of excitement.

A clay-colored sparrow, rare to Northwest Florida, caught everyone’s attention, as did a woodcock that surprised the team when it flew from cover before anyone tried to call it.

There were coots and snipes and yellow-bellied sap suckers galore. Even a regal peregrine falcon, the world’s fastest animal.

The third volunteer on Knothe’s team, Angie Miner, has a real job catching and tagging endangered salamanders.

She’s in her second year of birding and was soaking in every bit of advice Knothe and Murphy were willing to give.

“I definitely am learning a lot,” she said. “I’m trying to catch on to all these chits and chats we’re hearing. If the birds did their full call, I’d be fine.”

The information gathered through the bird count, while not considered to be 100 percent accurate, is turned over to the National Audubon society and helps the organization keep track of population trends, Knothe said.

Some experts say the bird count points out trends — hummingbirds wintering farther north than usual, for instance — that might lend further credence to the argument for global warming.

Winter is a good time for the count, Knothe said, because the seasonal migrations have ended and the birds present in an area have taken up at least seasonal residency.

Monday’s rains watered down this year’s count for the Knothe team, but even after heavy storms struck at 10 a.m. the plan remained to count as many birds as possible from dark until dark.

The crew ceased counting shortly before 4:30 p.m., but not until after it had caught sight of a rare red-breasted nut hatch.

Knothe said his team had documented more than 70 individual species of bird before calling it a day.

“It was good birding and yucky weather,” he said. “The number of species we were able to get was probably down, but we did get some good birds.